D.C. Sports Bog: May 23, 2010 - May 29, 2010

(1983 AP photo) Joe Jacoby and Jeff Bostic spent 24 minutes talking with Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin during a recent episode of ESPN 980's Sports Reporters. If you lived through the first Gibbs era as a Redskins fan, you're gonna want to go listen. It was brilliant radio....

With all the stories about Duncan Keith and Eric Belanger and all the other hockey heroes who played through dental tragedy this spring, it occurs to me that this AT&T Park vendor might have some sort of future in the NHL. Dude took a laser of a line drive...

I didn't want to let this offseason pass with only one item in which Dexter Manley comments on Albert Haynesworth, so here's your second. During his recent appearance on ESPN 980's The Sports Fix, Manley was much more expansive in arguing that Haynesworth should get himself to Ashburn. "I talked...

If this happened in the Subway Series, it would have been on the back page of the tabloids. Because it happened in the Battle of the Beltways, it took a week before Josh Willingham even responded to the dirt-kicking he endured at the feet of Julio Lugo. Via The...

Since I just recently mentioned that Dmitri Young is back in the baseball swing of things as a consultant and hitting instructor with the independent Oakland County Cruisers of the Frontier League, figured I needed to pass along this story. It comes from a recent Dmitri appearance on Sirius XM's...

(Courtesy Tom Foye) Usually when I go on vacations to international landmarks, I leave my D.C. sports memorabilia at home. Luckily, not everyone shares my habits, because that image is above is awesome. I'll let its star, Tom Foye, explain, via e-mail: I brought my Caps flag with me...

I really should have thought of this myself, but in light of the polling over D.C.'s best-ever sports anchor, the chaps at Mister Irrelevant polled the local literati on the five best active D.C. sports television personalities. The three leading vote-getters were Buckhantz, Beninati and Czarniak. I was a...

(By John McDonnell - TWP) Three things you can expect when listening to a Dexter Manley interview: 1) He'll plug the living hell out of Certified Building Services. 2) He'll say something that makes you chuckle into your discarded sunflower seed shells. 3) He'll be a ruthless Redskins optimist....

Joe Gibbs has visited Ashburn several times since Bruce Allen and Mike Shanahan were hired, and has talked to them about the direction of the franchise. During his appearance on ESPN's First Take on Wednesday, Gibbs was asked about the biggest piece of advice he delivered to the team's...

Some people want to get angry about the fact that June 4 is now probably not going to be Stephen Strasburg's Major League debut. Wherever the date came from -- and it wasn't the Nats -- a lot of people had started spending a lot of money on June 4...

NEWS. (By John McDonnell - TWP) They say the NFL has no offseason anymore. I don't know who they are, but they're bloody right. On Jan. 3, the Redskins lost to the Chargers to finish 4-12. On Jan. 4, they fired Jim Zorn. And since then, the news has...

Glenn Brenner with Maureen Bunyan. (1977 promotional photo from WTOP) Len Shapiro's ranking of the top 10 sports anchors over the past 40 years could hardly have been done by a more authoritative writer. Shapiro has spent much of that time as the top sports media writer in this...

I don't really write about Baltimore baseball teams, but Charm City is technically part of this geographic area, and so Wednesday marks an important date for all of us. It's the beginning of the 2010 baseball bobblehead season. Go crazy. I mentioned a few key bobblehead dates a year...

On Jan. 11, 1987, the Redskins played the Giants for the NFC championship in East Rutherford. The Redskins lost, 17-0, getting shut out for the first time in the Gibbs era. The winds that day were gusting up to 30 mph, and Gibbs later said that the coin flip,...

(By John McDonnell - TWP) New Redskins running back Larry Johnson hasn't been shy about expressing his opinions about the lovely city of Kansas City. Even before he left the Chiefs, he talked about the "jealousy and the envy" in that city, and how he felt trapped in his...

Flip Saunders was in his former Minnesota haunts on Tuesday, watching draft prospects work out at Target Center. He spoke to the local media there, and seemed to leave little doubt about whom the Wizards will be taking. The Pioneer Press wrote that Saunders "strongly believes" the Wizards will take...

Donovan McNabb moved to Great Falls over the weekend, and he did so in awesome fashion: using two moving fans with the Eagles logo and "Mover of Philadelphia Eagles" labels. The Reliable Source reports that it's a $2.1 million house with five bedrooms and seven baths; he'll likely have the...

John Wall has had a relationship of sorts with Barack Obama since January, when the President called John Calipari and his Kentucky Wildcats to thank them for raising more than $1 million for Haiti. "Hello Mr. President this is John Wall," the point guard said during the call. "I've...

Strasburg mania photos from Syracuse by Jonathan Newton - TWP. Because it's late May, a great number of online writers have picked up on Steve Phillips's insistence that he would trade Stephen Strasburg for Roy Oswalt. None seem to agree with the former Mets GM. They're all taking a...

MASN showed Stephen Strasburg's Monday night Syracuse start live. It was the first live Strasburg (minor-league) broadcast in the D.C. market this season. It was the only live and local pro sports broadcast in the D.C. market. It was going against the NHL and NBA playoffs. And people watched....

Because I'm nothing if not responsive to my readers, I present this question from my weekly Tuesday chat: What happened to the Eastern Motors commercials? I don't see them as much anymore. It's time for them to get Strasburg, Ovie, and Wall together in a ultimate odd couple commercial....

(By Marlene Karas for TWP) You remember what Curt Schilling said on ESPN about Stephen Strasburg? Here, I'll refresh. "I've never seen anything like this," Schilling said. "Never. Nothing close. Not at that age." Ok, new expert, same network, new Nats prospect, same result. Bobby Valentine was asked about...

(By Matthew Lewis - TWP) Mike Wise's excellent column on Bruce Allen and Mike Shanahan working to mend old Redskins wounds was excellent for another reason: Post layout editors dug out yet another old George Allen photo. These are always good. It's not quite riding-a tricycle awesome, but it's...

Dmitri Young, who I'd argue remains one of the five or six most popular players in Nats history, ended his career quietly in D.C., tearing a quad muscle while on a rehab stint with Harrisburg and then retiring without fanfare. He's since resurfaced as a consultant and hitting instructor...

Chatting at 11:30. Submit questions here. By this point, just about everything sensible that could be said about Stephen Strasburg has already been said. So now it's time to turn to the nonsensical things. I'll go first: Stephen Strasburg ate 17 bowls of oatmeal while skiing through the sand...

"In my mind, I was like, 'No way we're gonna get it, no way we're gonna get it, I'm just gonna watch and see,' " Andray Blatche told reporters last week, describing his preparation for the draft lottery. "Once I seen it, my jaw dropped like...." he said, and...

Dexter and Montana. (1986 photo by Gary A. Cameron - TWP) I only got see Joe Gibbs in action for four years, but that was enough to verify the age-old Gibbsologist postulate: that every team the Redskins were about to face could have run roughshod over a team consisting...

Greivis Vasquez left last week's pre-draft workouts in Chicago so he could return to College Park for his graduation ceremonies. Comcast SportsNet was there to capture some of the footage. Sadly, he seems to have made it across the stage without a single shimmy....

In his brief previous comments about D.C., John Wall's focus has mostly been on Barack Obama. During a Monday appearance on ESPN 980's The Sports Fix, he expanded about what he knows about D.C. "If they pick me, that's gonna mean a lot," Wall said of the Wizards. "It's a...

This, if you haven't seen it, is the Brooks Laich hit on Alex Ovechkin that ignited a brief Canada-Russia rumble and inspired this photograph. It also inspired a troubling quote from Ovechkin's teammate, Semyon Varlamov. "Most of all during the game I was infuriated with the constant attempts to...

I don't know if there's anything special happening at Nationals Park on June 4, but it appears to be a tough ticket. Like, the Infield Gallery section, the $24 seats? You can't even get two tickets together on June 4. And yet on June 5 -- same opponent, same stadium,...

(By Toni L. Sandys - TWP) With Ted Leonsis set to assume ownership of Verizon Center, many Caps fans have hoped this will mean a more sympathetic home venue for their team. Among the oft-heard complaints, Caps fans have said that the temperature at Verizon is not optimal for...

If you saw Josh Willingham hit the walk-off home run in the 10th inning of the rubber game between the Orioles and the Nats, you likely watched the completion of his home run trot. Nothing better than seeing the dogpile at home plate, plus for once Rob Dibble wasn't really...